I really don’t know what to say.

On the surface “POED” is Psychological Suspense, but the Poe-infused style could also win it a Contemporary Gothic label. And that Poe-connection means horror can’t be far away.

At least “The Mary Shelley Game” is a straight out Mystery. Or is it? The stories within the story are all over the genre universe and the stalker in the woods makes a case for suspense or thriller.

And now I’m working on the fourth MONSTER. I’m telling myself it’s Romantic Suspense, but I could be wrong. I think I’ve struck the appropriate balance between the mystery/suspense elements and the romance, but….

Does any of this really matter? I read all sorts of genres. My Kindle is fat with a wild mix — historical romances, science fiction, classic horror, urban fantasy, ghost stories, cozy mysteries, noir detectives, paranormal and the rest. I even read non-fiction. (Believe it or not…)

But books are marketed to ever-thinner slices of the reading universe. It seems like the narrower the scope the easier it is to find the right readers. This would imply that most readers are into only one kind of book.

Is this true? Am I dancing alone in my genre shuffle?

Do you read across genres? Let me know…

Historical Romance/Romantic Suspense/Suspense Mystery/Mystery Horror/ Horror Thriller/Thriller Terror/Terror Mystery/ Mystery Murder/ Murder Detective/ Detective Noir……

Horror stories, and movies, that are relentless — with scary chapter after scary chapter — are never as frightening as the stories that mix in some humor.

When I was a kid, I fell in love with the classic horror movies on TV. Some of the humor may have been unintentional — or simply the result of dated clichés — but for every ridiculous moment there was a shiver of real fear. That first moment when the Mummy comes to life, the bat outside the window, lightning on the moor… all those key scenes were heightened by whimsy, if not a full belly laugh of a joke.

By the time I found my way to classic horror parodies, I was primed for the laugh/shiver/laugh/shiver ride. I’m not saying that I was actually scared when I saw “Abbott & Costello meet Frankenstein” (the Mummy, Jekyll & Hyde, etc.), but frantic physical comedy set up moments that went BOO!

“Love at First Bite” and my all time favorite film, Mel Brook’s masterpiece “Young Frankenstein” never aimed for that mix of fear and fun. They were steady humor machines. (I cannot even guess how many times I’ve seen “Young Frankenstein” but I’m happy to see it again and again and again…)

Lately I’ve been reading a variety of scary stories — full out horror, terror, mystery, suspense, romantic suspense, paranormal and more — and I’ve been studying the ones that have the greatest impact on me as a reader. The humor/fear mix is a winner and so is the frisson created by the juxtaposition of the ordinary and the outlandish. But I think the stories that create the most true fear in me — the stories I decided to read in daylight instead of at bedtime — are the ones that tickle with a feather light touch of humor (charm or whimsy) and then slither gently into the dark before the big reveal.

Wow! Now that’s scary! I’m working on it.

I’ve recently read fiction by two new authors — new friends from blogging, Twitter & LinkedIn — and I’m pleased to report that these two entirely different writers have both produced settings that were vivid and so real that the characters actions ring true.

As I don’t review books on this blog and don’t want to start. I’m not going to do full out reviews of “Such is Life” and “Vokhtah.” I will simply use both of these new books as examples of the best use of distinctive settings.

In her science fiction book  “Vokhtah” A. C. Flory invites the reader to a hostile planet “peopled” with creatures best described as winged sociopaths with Machiavellian motivations, a fully-realized cultural mythology, a hierarchic society and an unusual manner for procreation. Vokhtah is a brutal planet and survival of the fittest (shrewdest, most devious & cunning) code underpins all the characters interactions.

The sense of place is so clear and finely drawn that the actions of the characters flow as a consequence of where they are in geography and the rigid caste system of the planet. A less complete environment might have made the creatures a bit comical or, worse, two dimensional. A.C. Flory’s achievement is in creating a credible, incredible world.

Jeri Walker-Bickett didn’t have to create her lonely landscape — she found it in various locations here in the United States. Her hyper-realistic short story collection “Such is Life” is set in a range of places — a suffocating small town in Montana, New Orleans, a suburban community determined to protect their children from outside influences, etc. It’s America today.

In each story, the sense of time and place anchors the story. The story “Leaving Big Sky” begins in a laundromat. The protagonist is watching laundry tumble in a dryer because, unlike the laundromats in Butte, this one has no TV, magazines and coffee to keep people entertained. The sense of abject loneliness is so much a part of the environment that the author doesn’t have to tell the reader what John is feeling. We feel it with him. The squeaky clean town in the story entitled “Not Terribly Important” hides a cruel streak of bigotry beneath its family friendly veneer. For a moment I wanted to shake the protagonist’s shoulders and tell her that the writing was on the wall.

By inviting the reader into specific and coherent environments, both of these authors give their characters real places to come to life.

VOKHTAH on Amazon

Such is Life on Amazon

That was not the case this afternoon in the elevator. I was going out to the farmer’s market at Union Square in the middle of the day I needed a break from my keyboard and there is nothing like shopping for apples that is better for shaking up the brain. I stepped into the empty elevator. The door closed and a voice startled me.

“Your Con Edison account has now been approved for a special offer. Please press two and….”

I jumped out of my skull and dropped my empty shopping bag. Fortunately, it’s not a long way from the 4^th floor to the lobby. It was just long enough for me to determine that the voice came from inside the new elevator’s operating system.

“Carlos, does the elevator talk?”

The doorman told me that the alarm button that automatically phones both the elevator company and the doorman’s desk gets a little crazy sometimes and “…makes phone calls. A woman came down from the sixth floor and wanted to know why she was hearing a commercial for a bank.”

Disembodied voices are a classic ploy in horror, ghost stories and, occasionally, in suspense novels. It also has a wide variety of interpretations throughout history. In some traditions, disembodied voices with important messages are declared communications from heaven — no doubt, no questions…. Joan of Arc was sure about that. So were Moses and Joseph Smith and many others. The religious implications of hearing voices only get confusing when you add modern psychiatric and neurological thoughts to the equation. Auditory hallucinations can be caused by brain tumors and other neurological disorders. Hearing voices is also a delusion associated with schizophrenia and other psychiatric diagnoses.

This is where WHAT the voices are saying becomes critical. “Press 2 for our special offer” is a whole lot less interesting (and less scary) than the instructions that the Son of Sam Killer got from the neighbor’s dog, which sent him on his killing spree in New York in the 1970s.

I’m really glad that the alarm inside the new elevator cab has the ability to call the elevator company. I just wish it didn’t also call the power company and banks — at least not when I’m on the way to the market. Now, will I write a story about a talking elevator? I think that’s almost inevitable.

But I just can’t get into zombies.

Recently, I’ve read a few zombie books and tried to get myself into the zombie fad but I’ve failed. I can’t wrap my head around the appeal of brain-eating, walking dead. Werewolves? Yea team! Vampires? No question.  Ghosts, demons, evil wizards — check, check, check — all good — but Zombies have zero appeal.

I remember that when I saw the original “Dawn of the Dead” I was frightened, but I was far from charmed. It seems that what I really like is a dash of charm with my chills. I love the sexy monsters of “True Blood” so by comparison any zombie, — classic or contemporary, slow or fast, dull or funny, even in a Jane Austen remix — is going to suffer in a comparison.

I have two questions today:

If you love zombies, please tell me why?

If you don’t, tell me why you don’t love ‘em?

Share your thoughts on Zombies!

I’m going to see Alan Cummings’s one-man Macbeth on Broadway (yes, he plays ALL the roles and it’s set in an asylum), so I’m rereading Macbeth. Lady Macbeth is one of the best characters of all time! She is both a tortured soul and the soul of unbridled ambition.

Lots of lessons to be learned from her ruthless, single-minded drive. But is she a monster? I’ve seen a few productions of the play, and movie versions too. Sometimes her outsized need is so gigantic that she comes across as an evil genius and other times she’s so out-of-control that she’s a werewolf with the full moon is rising. I’m looking forward to seeing how this great actor plays her — and her hubby too.

I’m also pondering what makes a villain a monster? Is it the size of the villainous ambitions? Is it the level of animal brutality? Is the monster in the blood lust of a vampire or the physical, animal power of the beast?

Who is YOUR favorite villain and is he or she a MONSTER?

Favorite Macbeths…

As of right now, my favorite Macbeth was Patrick Stewart. I saw him on Broadway with Kate Fleetwood as his Lady. The setting had 20^th century Stalinist overtones with super scary witches dressed as nurses. There’s a video of the production. I think I’ll see it after the Alan Cumming’s show.

Patrick Stewart’s Macbeth

“Men of Respect” with John Turturro as a Macbeth-like hit man in a crime family, and a fabulous cast including Stanley Tucci, Peter Boyle and Dennis Farina. I get chills thinking about the actress Katherine Borowitz scrubbing the bathtub in a frenzy of guilt and fear. “Out, out…”

“Men of Respect”

Chapter 17A: Suitable Words and Actions

Money doesn’t buy happiness or love, but it does make hiring an expensive, international private detective firm to track down a former East German spy possible. Amanda shared the report with Daniel:

Her real name was Astrid Baumann. She was actually five years older than her persona of Candace Gregore. She had worked for the Stassi in East Germany until she ran afoul of her superiors in the secretive agency. She eventually opened a photography supply store and not long after the wall fell, she moved to the Kreuszberg section of Berlin where she has an art gallery. She’s been married for 30 years to a photographer. They have two grown children and three grandchildren.

“Do you want to meet her?” Daniel asked.

“I don’t think so,” Amanda replied. “Candace never really existed. It would be like meeting an actress when you just love the role.”

Chapter 17B: Suitable Words and Actions

Money doesn’t buy happiness or love, but it does buy the services of an expensive, international private detective firm to track down a former East German spy. Amanda shared the report with Daniel:

Her real name was Astrid Baumann. She was actually five years older than her persona of Candace Gregore. She had worked for the Stassi in East Germany until she ran afoul of her superiors in the secretive agency. She eventually opened a photography supply store and not long after the wall fell, she moved to the Kreuszberg section of Berlin where she has an art gallery. She’s been married for 30 years to a photographer. They have two grown children and three grandchildren.

“Do you want to meet her?” Daniel asked.

“I think we have to, I mean,” Amanda hesitated. “After all this time, I want to know who she really was. What, if any, of the Candy we knew was real.”

Jack Sommer died a few days later. He caught a summer cold that quickly led to pneumonia. The trip to Berlin was delayed until the fall, after Amanda had packed up the house and Daniel decided not to write the screenplay of “Waltzing in the Snow.”

“I can live on the option long enough to write another novel and a play, too. I don’t need the headaches.” He explained to his incredulous agent.

Amanda made all the travel arrangements, booking them into the famous Adlon Hotel by the Brandenburg Gate. Daniel thought the luxury hotel was a crazy waste of money, but Amanda insisted.

“We’re too old to rough it in a little hotel in Kreuzeberg.”

After a long discussion regarding the pros and cons of reaching out to Astrid Baumann in advance, they decided to simply show up at her gallery during business hours. The gallery was on a side street a few blocks from Hermannplatz.

A young woman with a long, thick, dark braid hanging down her back stood looking into the gallery’s window. She wore jeans and a leather jacket. For a second, Amanda thought she’d traveled back in time, as well as across the ocean, to find her old friend unchanged. But when the girl turned around, she was clearly not Candace/Astrid. A sleeping baby was hanging from a carrier on the young woman’s chest.

“Guten Morgen,” Amanda said.

“Good morning,” the girl replied with a pleasant tone and a near perfect American accent. “May I help you?”

“Yes, we’re looking for…” Daniel paused. “We’re looking for Astrid Baumann.”

“That’s my mother. She’s in the gallery. I’m Angelika.”

Angelika led the way into the gallery. Calling out in German to her mother. A man rolled out of the back room in a wheelchair and said something to Angelika.

“My father does not speak English,” Angelika explained. “She’ll be out in a minute. Just making coffee in the back.”

Angelika’s resemblance to the Candace Gregore of their college days was uncanny. Amanda wanted to throw her arms around the young woman, but when Astrid Baumann emerged from the backroom of her gallery holding a cup of coffee, Amanda felt all the oxygen in the room disappear.

It was Candy. But it was not.

Astrid brushed away tears as she walked forward to embrace Daniel and then Amanda.

“I never thought,” she paused. “I dreamt, but never thought I would see you two again. I felt so lost.” She sighed. “This is my husband, Leo, and you have met my daughter Angelika and little Annette. I have a son, too, Klaus, and Klaus has two boys — twins.”

After a few awkward moments, Astrid suggested that the three of them go to a nearby café to talk.

“Leo will take care of the gallery. I want to talk to you, to explain.”

“We know what you were, what you did….” Amanda said. “We just don’t…”

“You don’t know who I really was, how I really felt about you, about all of you…” Astrid finished Amanda’s sentence. “I can only try to explain it. I cannot excuse what I did — how I hurt you. It was not my choice. None of it.”

They settled down at a quiet table at the back of a café. The coffee came with cookies and the invitation to linger much longer than at any similar place in New York. Seen in the sunlight streaming in from a courtyard window, Astrid looked old. Evidence of hard life was on her face. For a little while they caught up on the facts of the current lives. The children, husbands, former husbands, the death of Amanda’s father, the planned German translation of “Waltzing in the Snow.”

“I will read it in English, Daniel. No need for me to wait.”

When there was a lull in the conversation, it was Astrid, who chose to speak of the elephant in the room.

“I was very young when the Stassi recruited me. It was because I’d shown an affinity for learning foreign languages. At first I spied on foreigners in the GDR. Then they turned me into an international spy. Candace was the creation of the top spymasters of the East. But once I got to New York, once I became her, the lines between me and my role as Candace began to blur. I loved my life there. I loved all of you. At first I had to pretend so much and then…. And then I didn’t. I was her.”

“Until Jack discovered the truth,” Daniel interjected.

“I was already planning my departure. I was going to tell all of you that I was running off to South America. I would have sent a postcard or two and then let Candace fade in your memories.”

“But my father couldn’t let that happen.”

“No, Amanda, he needed me to be gone and quickly. The CIA man reminded me of the Stassi men, of the Russian spymasters, too. He “fixed” the problem. Your father told him to fix it so that all of you thought I’d run off with a Russian drug dealer I’d met at the restaurant or arrange for a letter from me to come from Argentina, but… But he had another idea. I didn’t know what he’d done until years later when I looked at my own Stassi file.”

“Did you know he killed another girl to protect you?” Daniel asked.

“No, not until long after when one of my former colleagues used it to show how disreputable the Americans were. I knew that killer, that beast was not even a CIA agent. He was some kind of criminal, like the goons that beat Leo when he was a dissident in the East.”

“Your husband was an East German dissident?”

“Yes, Leo was a young writer and photographer, a rebel. I fell in love with him, and the Stassi turned on me. It’s all history now. All dead and gone and good riddance; I like my life now.”

Amanda and Astrid laughed about both owning photography galleries, and after Daniel suggested lunch and something a bit stronger than coffee, Amanda reached into her large bag and pulled out a box, placing it with care on the table.

“This is yours.”

Astrid opened the box. It was her old Rollieflex.

“My old friend,” Astrid stroked the camera as tears streamed down her cheeks. “I’ve missed you so.”

Most of my friends have learned that an anecdote or quick observation might wind up as the starting point for a story. A few have even warned me off recycling a tempting tidbit. In the absence of a specific promise not to write about it — whatever it is — its fair game as fiction fodder.

Being a story vampire means I’m obligated to suck the story dry, leaving only traces of the original inspiration. I’m not reporting the news or simply dressing up that tiny article at the bottom of the newspaper page about the body found in a field behind a barn — the story vampire magic is in the metamorphosis and the results must be something new.

Inviting a story vampire into your life is a whole lot safer than opening the door to a conventional vampire — or to the familiar psychic variation (AKA the time-sucking, energy-sucking people we all know and try desperately to avoid.)

So next time a friendly writer listens intently, tell them a great story!

Chapter 16: Ending Well

Jack was exhausted. It took several tries the following morning, but Amanda finally got the rest of the story from her father.

“I didn’t know what to do. I figured out what was happening and confronted her that Easter when all of you visited. She tried to blackmail me. She said she’d expose my stupidity to the CIA if I turned her in. It would have ruined me, ruined us all…. So I asked Spooky, Horatio Lane, to help me out of the jam I’d gotten myself into.

“He hired a goon named Franklin something to take care of it. Franklin met with Candace and arranged for her to disappear herself. Franklin was to make sure that the police determined that she was just one of those girls who picks up one day and goes off. I thought he’d leave a trail of breadcrumbs leading to a drug-dealer boyfriend or something like that. But Franklin was a rogue asshole. He’s dead now, so I can say it out loud without him coming after me — or you. But he concocted this plan to kill a girl who looked like Candy, leave clues to Candy’s identity with the body and just let everyone think she’d died.”

“He killed Maria Ruiz?”

“Said she was collateral damage in a larger scheme of things.”

Amanda burst into tears.

“I told you Franklin was a scary man — a crazy killer. He’s dead now. I told you that, right. He’s dead now, so you are safe. It’s OK. He can’t come after you. He said he would, he did….” Jack rambled.

“Franklin’s plan backfired two ways, he dumped her body in a construction site on a Friday. It was supposed to be discovered on Monday morning, but the Russian mob was culling their own numbers and they used the same dumpsite for one of their hits. They also filled in the hole. It was confusing, no doubt, for the construction guys on Monday morning, but…”

“Did Candy know Franklin was going to kill someone in her place?” Amanda asked.

“I don’t think so. It’s not what I hired him to do. For all I know, she’s alive and well and living in Germany.”

Daniel and Amanda took her car and headed to the Mall. Amanda said she needed “art therapy” in the form of time in the Hirshhorn Museum’s sculpture garden. A few hours of art and a bottle of wine over dinner later and Daniel made a radical suggestion.

“Let’s try to find her.”

In one of my unpublished novels — my attempt at urban fantasy/vampire romance that may never see the light of day (or deepest night) — the heroine would very much like to plunge ahead into an intense affair with the charming vampire. But he is a reluctant lover. He has valid reasons for slowing down the fun. His romantic track record is particularly dreadful. So the romance in the novel was relegated to sexy dreams.

Maybe that’s why the book didn’t work?

I think I’ve had more success with stories within stories. Characters reveal themselves in the stories they tell each other. It could be as simple as a parent reciting a favorite fairy tale to a child at bedtime. The choice of the story reveals what’s important to the parent. Is it Cinderella or Beauty and the Beast? Or, perhaps, this parent is struggling with the consequences of a deal made with the devil and chooses to tell Rumpelstiltskin to the child?

In my first MONSTER — The Mary Shelley Game — the characters share their own Frankenstein-themed stories at a weekend party in the country. This was inspired by the house party where Mary Shelley wrote her first draft of her masterpiece. It was a rainy weekend and the erudite guests decided to write ghost stories for entertainment. What a great idea if your guests include noted poets! I really enjoyed imagining the stories written by the characters — especially the more competitive characters. My aim was to have the stories within the story work independent of the overall text. It was challenging and fun.

Perhaps the most famous play within a play gambit is Shakespeare’s play within Hamlet.

May be the devil, and the devil hath power

T’ assume a pleasing shape. Yea, and perhaps

Out of my weakness and my melancholy,

As he is very potent with such spirits,

Abuses me to damn me. I’ll have grounds

More relative than this. The play’s the thing

Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.

From Hamlet